When HP announced Unified Functional Testing (UFT) 11.5, one of the new features the team was excited to share is Insight. This is a popular feature and is widely used by practitioners.

Before the launch of Insight, test automation engineers faced the issue of fully- or partially-failing object recognition by the test tool.

The reasons for this issue can be varied; ranging from adoption of newer technologies to the implementation of highly customized UI component libraries. Whatever the reasons for the problem are, the biggest sufferers are the test automation engineers. If the tool cannot catch the object signature well, the actions thereon are unreliable.

HP UFT Insight aims to alleviate this long standing object recognition issue. Insight works by using a patented, complex logic of identifying and storing the object by visual properties. These may include:

The look and feel of the UI object

The color properties of the UI object

The dimensions of the UI object relative to the display real estate

Readers ought not to mistake the Insight feature with that of Bitmap checkpoint. Bitmap checkpoint was simpler bitmap-oriented mapping of the UI object. Such mapping would succumb to changes in resolution and other visual changes of the monitor. Insight overcomes such vulnerabilities to big extent.

I have seen a case of a prospective customer who was evaluating HP UFT for test automation. The project given by their client is a Stingray implementation. However the catch is that there are multiple occurrences of MFC file versions in the application folders. Also the areas not covered by Stingray like customized controls, newer or open source UI libraries etc. are featured in the Application Under Test (AUT). This weakens the Stingray add-in capability.

Here is where Insight comes to rescue. The Insight used to catch the Stingray add-in skipped UI controls has been very effective and has served the evaluation very well. Not only were the selective GUI objects tamed but the team could also perform actions on them like click, enter data and complete the workflow.

The solution to tricky objects escaping identification thence automation has been well received by the company evaluating HP UFT as well as by their end customer. The critical business process workflow could be captured by UFT automation and saved precious time and effort thereby increasing test coverage.